Acid attack woman 'wanted to die'

[Bald Bouncer]

Naomi Oni said her whole head was swollen after the attack

A woman has said she did not want to live when she saw herself for the first time after having acid thrown in her face near her home in east London.

Naomi Oni, 20, said she was attacked by a person wearing a veil covering their face after getting off a bus in Lodge Avenue, Dagenham, on 30 December.

She said: "I've never been so scared in my life. I just knew it was acid.

"The first time I looked I was shocked. I didn't want to live after I saw my face."

Miss Oni, who worked at the Victoria Secret lingerie store in Westfield, Stratford, is recovering after undergoing surgery for burns sustained in the attack.

'That person failed'

When she first saw herself in the mirror she said: "My head was 10 times the size, my face was black, my eyes were swollen and my eyes were cutting out.

"I thought I was going to go blind: I was terrified."

Determined to stay positive despite her injuries, she said things could have been much worse.

"That person failed, whatever their aim was they failed.

"God has given me a life for a reason and that's what keeps me going."

She told BBC London she was making her way home from work when the attack happened at about 00:40 GMT.

"I got off the bus stop of my house and was about to cross the road, I felt a presence behind me so I decided to look back.

"I saw what seemed to be a lady wearing what I think is a hijab (sic), which was mostly black.

"I remember being startled and shocked, thinking 'I don't remember her getting off the bus with me, I didn't hear footsteps behind me'.

"The person was just staring back at me."

'Screaming hysterically'

Miss Oni said as she turned her head back she "felt something being thrown at her and felt a splash".



Miss Oni worked in Victoria's Secret in Westfield Stratford

"I ran home down the road screaming hysterically shouting on the phone to my boyfriend telling him to call 999.

"I got to my door and was shouting acid, acid, acid.

"Before I could feel it burning, I just knew it was acid, I thought OK someone is out to... kill me."

Relatives helped her flush her face with water before paramedics arrived at the house.

Miss Oni said: "I was scared, I was shaking, I've never been so scared in my life."

She has since been released from hospital having undergone skin grafts.

And she says while she feels lucky not to have been blinded, she has no idea why she was targeted.

"I have no clue why someone would do this to me.

"I still ask myself the same question every day, Why me? What have I done? I didn't understand."

The Metropolitan Police have said officers were keeping an open mind as to the motive. No arrests have been made.

BBC News

[sanj]

What sort of sick bastard would want to do that?Just mean's that there are people walking around with acid waiting to maim and blind people for no reason at all.

[liveseytowers]

All in the name of religion no doubt. Such a shame people can't just get on.

[darkstar]

All in the name of religion no doubt. Such a shame people can't just get on.

Yes I heard on news it was a woman with one of those full face vails so I expect it was something to do with the Muslim religion .. Very sad indeed ..another life ruined in the name if a non existent god

[dpSparhawk]

It could be any number of reasons. A veil, although symbolic of certain religions can be easily obtained and used to hide a persons face to avoid identification or to make it look like it is a religiously motivated attack. That said, it could have been done for completely different reasons other than religion such as immodesty or jealousy (although often those two feelings are traced back to religious beliefs anyway)

The way things are, the probability of it being an immodesty or jealousy attack or is quite high. It does seem that acid attacks are more common amongst Muslim people but there's nothing to suggest the person carrying out the attack was muslim.

I think despite the fact her injuries are bad, she's lucky they weren't a lot worse.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ac...w=1280&bih=891

[darkstar]

Most probably a modesty thing as u pointed out which is just the way some men have interpreted there own religious views . Just a shame that a belief in either religion or modesty tainted by a religious belief may have been the reason behind it .. We may never know unfortunately

[Bald Bouncer]

In posted this as I had been watching and very interesting documentary called Saving Face, well worth a watch.

Saving faces in Pakistan

When he learned that there are 150 acid attacks a year in Pakistan, plastic surgeon Mohammad Jawad went there to help repair the damage done to the victims. Now he is the subject of an Oscar-nominated film


Dr Jawad examines the face of Zakia, the victim of an acid attack. Photograph:
Asad Faruqi

Zakia's face looks as if half of it has been rubbed out. What's left is one eye, half a nose and a mouth that can no longer smile. She seldom leaves the house, and when she does she wears an all-encompassing black niqab and sunglasses.

The young mother is just one of the 150 victims of acid attacks reported each year in Pakistan, according to the charity Acid Survivors Foundation – although the true figure is likely to be much higher. It's a form of violence that has spread across the world from Uganda to Cambodia, and the victims are most often women and children.

In Pakistan, Zakia's case is only uncommon because instead of having to spend her life marked by the horrific attack, a British surgeon, Mohammad Jawad, is helping to rebuild her face. The treatment is followed in an Oscar-nominated documentary, Saving Face, Pakistan's first Academy Award nomination

Now a pioneering surgeon in the field, just four years ago Jawad had never seen an acid attack injury, and certainly did not know they happened in Pakistan, the country in which he was born and trained as a doctor. Sitting in his prestigious cosmetic surgery clinic in central London, he tells me about his first case in 2008 at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Katie Piper, a 23-year-old model, had been disfigured by sulphuric acid thrown by a violent ex-boyfriend.

Despite his years of training, Jawad admits that he was shocked, "I had not seen anything like it before. I had seen bigger burns and on a younger patient, but never facial burns of this nature. Unless acid is neutralised it just keeps going deeper and deeper into your skin. All of the patients I had treated had been the victims of accidents – this was attempted murder." In a pioneering operation, Jawad used Matriderm – a synthetic skin substitute – to re-form her face. It had such impressive results that Piper referred to the surgeon as her "hero".

After hearing about his results another doctor told him that attacks were rife in Pakistan. Jawad had already made frequent trips there to carry out surgery on children with cleft palates, and burns victims who could not otherwise afford treatment. But he did not realise that the availability of acid for use in the cotton industry had led to assaults often linked to domestic violence or revenge attacks by rejected men. He began travelling to Pakistan every three months and holding free clinics (funded by charities including Islamic Help) to perform life-changing surgery. "With these women it was three or four years after they had been attacked," he says. "From the social justice point of view it was diabolical – [in some cases] the guys who did it might be caught, but bribe their way out of it. All I could do is use my skills to patch people up and give them a better face."

On Zakia, Jawad was able to use the techniques he had learned through operating on Piper to carry out the first surgery of its kind in Pakistan. He used Matriderm to smooth her ravaged face, gave her a pair of glasses with a painted eye and attached a prosthetic nose, allowing her finally to show her face in public.

The documentary follows Zakia's attempt to bring the husband who attacked her to justice – and the successful fight by the Acid Survivors Foundation to introduce a law to ensure a minimum prison sentence of 14 years for perpetrators of acid attacks.

Back in the UK, Jawad says he hopes the documentary will highlight the positive work plastic surgeons do every day in the NHS, and all over the world for patients with congenital, or developmental deformities, trauma injuries or cancer. "I want to restore the glory of plastic surgeons. Boob jobs have overshadowed our work restoring patients – their limbs, or breasts from cancer for instance."

The PIP scandal, which has left thousands of women with implants made of industrial-grade silicone – believed to be more likely to rupture and cause toxic contamination – has, he admits, not helped. Although he never used these implants in his own private clinic, Jawad says he was given them to use in his previous work for the Transform Cosmetic Surgery Group.

His work in Pakistan, he says, is a "moral obligation" for doctors like himself who received training in the country almost for free, and then left with their skills to join the NHS. He hopes that other doctors will be similarly inspired by the film. "I wanted to show I was having a great time – training local people and enjoying the work, owning up to my responsibilities and encouraging others to do the same." Then he laughs, "And if I get an Oscar out of it, am I going to say no?"

Saving Face will air on Channel 4 in early April. Dr Jawad blogs at www.mohammadjawad.com

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